HEARINGS START ON OBAMA CARE

Individual Mandate on the Hook
By Victor M Adamus

Today the highest court in the land will hold hearings on the Affordable Health Care Act also known as Obamacare since the legislation approved by Congress is President Obama’s hallmark piece of law.  Republicans in most states are co-plaintiffs in a suit to find the law un-constitutional.  The complaint though and the defense will raise more far reaching questions than most critics think the high court wants to hear.  It is scheduled for three days which is one of the longest running hearings the Supreme Court has scheduled in decades.

What’s on top is the individual mandate, forcing those with no health care to buy health care or be charged by the government a fee for not being insured.  Before the Act people with no insurance would benefit from free health care at hospitals throughout the nation until the insurance carriers increased preminums to businesses who offererd health insurance to their employees.  The increase was met with some disdain since health profiteers were just adding more money to their coffers.  The same rules of denying coverages as pre-existing conditions, were not paid by the insurance companies, stayed in place where in the Act insurers can no longer deny the coverage.  But they can increase rates based on hospitals charging off those that use the facilities expecting their neighbors who have coverage to pay the difference in their premiums.

It’s why Governor Mitt Romney put the brakes on insurance hikes when he was Governor of Massachusetts.  The State just flat out couldn’t pay billions of dollars for people with no insurance.  No contribution to the system yet using a costly system for the same care as someone who was paying their fair share.  His health care solution became the model for Obamacare.

The individual mandate relys on the theory that it’s unconstitutional to force a person to buy insurance.  However, counter to that are laws in all 50 states that require car owners to buy car insurance before they can even register the vehicle in that state.  In the 1960’s a car owner had options to pay a smaller premium to just cover the other driver.  He would fix his/her car themselves.  Years later, the laws were amended that you had to cover both owner and the other driver and some states used the amendment to throw in an inspection clause requiring cars be inspected once a year, forcing those car owners to wait in line at state approved inspection stations and those with faults had ten days to fix the car or take it off the road.

Then there are gas taxes imposed by both State and Federal on each gallon of gas pumped which again forces the individual to pay the tax at the pump or not get gas for his or her car.  I’m sure there are many other examples. 

When the Affordable Health Care Act was passed it lacked the single payer option which would have broken the monopoly of giant health care companies controlling the health care market.  People could buy from new companies who worked for lower profits and thereby would be willing to cut the premiums, some estimate, in half.  They could buy into Medicare and help offset the losses the government faces in that plan for Seniors.  It would relieve employers from the burden of a group policy and provide a savings to smaller businesses that could take the savings and invest in expanding their businesses.  But the health care lobby was too strong to give up their million dollar bonuses based on limiting the amount of claims paid to them by tricks like “pre-existing conditions” and younger people being thrown off their parents policy when they turned 18.  Even today, the Act allows younger people to stay on their parents policies until age 26.  So it’s an enormous challenge for the court.

If the court rules down the Affordable Health Care Act does it mean that insuring your car is also un-constitutional?  I wonder.